226 Stealing nanomachines for fun! (1/2)
Was it the wolves? No.
The soldier's silver snakes were fitted with extra camera equipment that could send back an image feed via the nanomachines' neural connection. So even though that shadow was extremely fast and the image was blurry, the soldier was very sure it wasn't a wolf.
Captain Zhou looked at him and wondered, ”If it's not a wolf, what is it?”
”It looked more like a… shadow,” the platoon member said. But at this moment, he exclaimed again, ”Oh no, my silver snake is getting out of my range!”
He then chased after it and tried to keep within the control range of the nanorobotic, silver snake. However, his speed was way lower than his opponent's. Before he could even cover two steps, his neural connection to that silver snake was completely cut off!
Captain Zhou's expression sank. He had not believed they would encounter any danger out here. But who could have thought they would lose a portion of their nanomachines less than three hours after entering the mountain!
And they didn't even know who did it! And for what motive!
If the opponent were a human, why did they want to steal the nanorobotic snake? As if they could use it after stealing it?!
”Captain, what do we do now?” someone asked.
Captain Zhou said with a cold expression, ”Where did he run off to?”
”To the southwest!” that platoon member said.
”Give chase!” Captain Zhou said, ”It's only one person, isn't it? Make a call to the next outpost with the radio. Tell them we've discovered a new target that might be even more important than the wolves. Let them know we'll be pursuing this target with everything we've got and will be disengaging from Operation: Wolf Encirclement.”
In truth, this Captain Zhou was the only person in the platoon who knew why they had been deployed to the mountains. There was no hurry in trying to encircle the wolves. What was more important was to ensure they did not lose the nanomachines.
…
Meanwhile, Ren Xiaosu had just received the nanorobotic snake, already in an idle state, from his shadow clone. He had thought it would take a nasty battle for him to get his hands on the nanomachines. But that would not have been worth it at all, and he still preferred picking them off the nanosoldiers who had gotten separated from their groups...
But sometimes, luck could even make a person hand you a pillow right when you were feeling sleepy. Someone had actually volunteered to send some nanomachines his way.
In just two seconds, the palace reset the nanomachines back to their factory settings by clearing the remote access protocol and executing a series of other instructions. The tiny, nanorobotic silver snake transformed back into liquid metal and melded together with the rest of the nanomachines within Ren Xiaosu's body.
It was like the newly gained nanomachines had been handed to him on a silver platter.
However, Ren Xiaosu was sad. The size of this silver snake was too small. It wasn't easy for him to control the shadow clone before finding this one snake. If he had to go and continue searching for more of them, how many years would that take him?
No! A glimmer suddenly appeared in Ren Xiaosu's eyes!
…
Lin Qi and the others kept going deeper and deeper into the forested mountains. However, they did not head up and were instead walking along the mountain pass down towards the valley.
”Captain, why don't we give up on the chase?” Lin Qi said, a little worried. ”It's only a silver snake. I'm afraid something bad will happen if we walk too far.”
Captain Zhou shot him a look and said, ”If you're so afraid of death, why be a soldier? The wolf pack isn't in our direction, so what's there to be afraid of? Keep marching!”
As that was being said, a platoon member whisper-shouted, ”Captain, look over there in the valley!”
Everyone turned to look at the valley and noticed a shadow dash by. That ”person” looked like he had been resting over there and wasn't expecting Captain Zhou and the others to chase him all the way here!